Szymon Goldberg

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Szymon Goldberg (born June 1, 1909 in Włocławek , † July 19, 1993 in Toyama , Japan ) was an American violinist and conductor of Polish origin.

Goldberg in Berlin at the age of 14

Life

His birthplace, located on the Vistula around 140 km northwest of Warsaw, was part of the Russian Empire (now Poland). He learned to play the violin from his first teacher Mieczysław Michałowicz . At the age of nine, in 1918, he went to Berlin , where he received free violin lessons from Carl Flesch because of his talent . At the age of 12 he made his debut in Warsaw in 1921 and performed in Berlin in 1924 with great success.

From 1925 to 1929 he was concertmaster of the Dresden Philharmonic . With the members of the Dresden Philharmonic, he formed the Simon Goldberg Quartet (Szymon Goldberg, Arthur von Freymann, Herbert Ronnefeld and Kleber), which later became the string quartet of the Dresden Philharmonic (Szymon Goldberg, Joseph Lasek, Herbert Ronnefeld and Enrico Mainardi) . Goldberg also appeared later (1928, 1930) with the pianist Paul Aron in his concert series "New Music" in Dresden.

He then moved to the Berlin Philharmonic at the personal invitation of Wilhelm Furtwängler . From 1930 to 1933 he formed a string trio with Paul Hindemith and Emanuel Feuermann , who also appeared on the radio from 1931 to 1932 with works by Ludwig van Beethoven , Max Reger and Franz Schubert . One of his last appearances in Germany was the interpretation of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler. As a Jew, he was banned from performing in 1934 and went to England. From here he went to Tremezzo on Lake Como , where Artur Schnabel had set up a music school in 1933. This was directed by Peter Diamand, who later became the director of the Holland Festival. Schnabel taught the pianists, his wife Therese the singers and Goldberg the violinists. These summer classes were attended by about fifty master students and Schnabel stayed there until 1939.

Lili Kraus was also living in Tremezzo at the time and Goldberg went on tour with her as a piano accompanist. For the British record company Parlophone they recorded the sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart in 1935 and 1937. After her European tour, Goldberg made her debut in New York in 1938 .

On an Asian tour accompanied by Lili Kraus, where he played with Max Vredenburg, among others, he was arrested by the Japanese in Indonesia on a pretext and was interned in Java from 1942 to 1945 .

After returning to the United States, he became an American citizen in 1953. From 1951 to 1965 he taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School and also worked as a conductor. The Nederlands Kamerorkest was founded in 1955 and gave its first concert at the Holland Festival that same year. Goldberg was the ensemble's musical director for 22 years. He appointed David Zinman as second conductor. Together they led the orchestra to the international piano nobile of the chamber music ensembles. From 1977 to 1980 Goldberg was director of the Manchester Camerata, founded in 1972 .

He has also appeared as a soloist and conductor with the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the Cleveland, the Chicago Symphony and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Tanglewood Festival). He conducted masterclasses for violin and chamber music in the USA: from 1978 to 1982 at Yale University , from 1978 at the Juilliard School of Music , from 1981 at the Curtis Institute of Music and from 1981 at the Manhattan School of Music .

In 1988 Szymon Goldberg married the much younger pianist Miyoko Yamane and they lived in Philadelphia. They spent their summer and Christmas holidays in Japan. In 1990 Goldberg became conductor of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo and visiting professor at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. In 1992 the Goldbergs moved to Japan and lived at the foot of the Tateyama Mountains in Toyama . Szymon Goldberg died here on July 19, 1993.

Act

Goldberg, who made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the age of 15 with Niccolò Paganini's violin concerto, was considered a musical child prodigy and a “first-class soloist and chamber virtuoso” from an early age. In England he played Mozart and Beethoven sonatas with pianist Lili Kraus , which are still considered important today. Goldberg's playing was characterized by “his renouncement of excessive vibrato, his rhythmic presence, the clarity and freshness in playing, which the musician preserved into old age”.

Among the recordings that Szymon Goldberg left behind as a violinist are some notable historical recordings:

  • first movement of Mozart's A major concerto KV 219 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Paul Kletzki (Telefunken, around 1932);
  • Paul Hindemith's Trio No. 1 for violin, viola and violoncello - recording with Paul Hindemith and Emanuel Feuermann from 1934;
  • all violin sonatas by Mozart recordings, first with the pianist Lili Kraus and in later years with the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu .

The Internationale Musikakademie Meißen eV was founded in 1999 as a demanding musical educational institution to offer young people the opportunity to intensively engage with music. In 2009, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the violinist Szymon Goldberg, she announced an international violin competition for the "Szymon Goldberg Award Meissen" for the first time.

Goldberg's violin

Goldberg played a Guarneri del Gesù known as "Baron Vitta" from 1734. After his death, the violin was given to the Smithsonian Institute for safekeeping by his wife, Miyoko Yamane-Goldberg . Through the mediation of some friends, the legal prerequisites were created to transfer the "Goldberg Baron Vitta" Guarneri del Gesù to the Library of Congress . This happened on April 24, 2006. The assumption that the Goldberg violin should be a “twin” of the ex “Kreisler” violin because they are made of the same piece of wood and that it is already in the Library of Congress located. However, it turned out that the "'Kreisler' Del Gesu 1733" was not a "twin" of the Goldberg violin, but the "Stretton".

literature

  • Bernard Gavoty, Maria Austria: Szymon Goldberg . Translated by Joseph T. Plageman. R. Kister Verlag, Geneva 1960, OCLC 3507465 .
  • Berliner Philharmoniker: Variations with Orchestra - 125 Years of the Berliner Philharmoniker , Volume 2, Biographies and Concerts, Verlag Henschel, May 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-568-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Szymon Goldberg - Object Metadata @ LexM
  2. ^ My Life and Music . The Autobiography of Artur Schnabel.
  3. ^ Musical Prisoners in the Dutch Indies
  4. ^ Aspen Music School
  5. ↑ Nederlands Kamerorkest (Chamber Orchestra)
  6. ↑ Manchester Camerata recording of Mozart's “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” dating from 1977 with the legendary Szymon Goldberg at the helm
  7. ↑ a b Bernd Klempnow: Late honor. Dresden's Philharmonic is reminiscent of the Jewish violinist Szymon Goldberg, who came as a teenager and was its concertmaster from 1925 to 1929 . In: Sächsische Zeitung , December 8, 2009, p. 8.
  8. ^ Szymon Goldberg Award Meissen
  9. ^ Baron Vitta in Cozia
  10. ^ Library of Congress publishes the story of Nick's Guarneri Del Gesu
  11. ↑ Back: Two-piece; from the same log as the "Stretton"
personal data
SURNAME Goldberg, Szymon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor and violinist
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Włocławek
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1993
Place of death Toyama , Japan